November Haze

Driving home from town, just before I reach the turn to my road from highway 25, I catch the most breathtaking view of the Blue Wall.  Mountains that are often shrouded in summer humidity, giving the horizon a graceful curve of peaks and valleys against a canvas-like light blue sky.  It reminds me of a painting, really, with the perspectives laid out to scale, colors chosen and blended to perfection.  They call those mountains the Blue Ridge for very good reason; despite all the color of fall that usually takes our breath away, for much of the year they are the bluish hills that define the very edges of the sky under which we live, work, worry and play.

November is usually a month of color.  A coolish mix of grey skies and wet leaves, gold and garnet, orange and brown.  This year though, the rain has abandoned us, leaving the ground scattered in brown crunchy leaves, our trees looking sadly barren of their usual Autumnal show.  Far worse though, are the thick clouds of smoke masking the view of our mountains in the distance.  Some days the fog hangs so thick we nearly forget there are mountains out there in the distance.  The edges of our sky have become shapeless, thick with smoke that fills our lungs and burns our eyes.

It seems that somewhere, someone decided that destruction should win over beauty.  That smothering smoke and hazy skies were more important than a breath of fresh air and the complete awe of viewing sunlight through the canopy of a tree covered in yellow leaves.  Someone decided that for us.  They gave us no say in the matter and now we lament our loss, shake our heads in bewilderment wondering who could possibly be so ignorant, so evil, so irresponsible.

We walked outside today, the cool, dry November air nipping at our fingers as we explored our own backyard.  Thirteen acres of meadows and woods, a few trees standing resolutely off to themselves in the middle of a freshly mown field, straw crunching at our feet, we found ourselves right at home in nature.  A few birds scurried from under bushes, probably wondering what we humans might get into while in their territory.  We found a huge old rock and scaled it for the view, took some pictures of the vastness of all the untarnished land.  I looked up at the sky, big and open, no power lines or big tree limbs blocking the view and thought that field would be the perfect place for star-gazing some night soon.  The sun was sinking fast behind some trees, it's welcome warmth leaving us too soon as we tromped our way back up the hill, through the neighbor's back yard and back to ours.

We discovered piles of brush, piles of bamboo all dried out and stacked neatly together, for what purpose, no one knows.  My boy climbed on old tractors and ran up a mountain of crushed asphalt, thrilled that he'd found the perfect boyhood playground for pretending he is fighting wars and hiding from the enemy.

Eventually we came back around the last building and into our own back yard.  I stood for a moment in awe, looking down the hillside, across the huge field that faces the driveway.  I took in the beauty of Autumn's art-work, searched in vain for the mountain tops above the trees.  I could barely make out the silhouette of one rounded mountain top, shrouded in the November haze of a fire burning miles away.

Isn't it just like life?  We go about our business, smelling smoke, noticing something just isn't right, but never really fretting over it because, after all, what's happening is happening far away.  Sure, we might get a whiff of smoke or miss out on a beautiful view for a while, but really what does it have t do with us?

Meanwhile firefighters are spending days and nights away from their families.  Forest animals are scurrying to try to find new homes.  People are being evacuated from their homes for days at a time--likely worried that they might not have a home to go back to.  Kids are banned from going outside because the air quality is so poor.  No one will sit by a campfire this Thanksgiving night.  But we still carry on as though it doesn't matter.  After all, the fire will eventually go out.  It will rain again.  We'll get our fresh air back and our pretty mountain views, though singed and spoiled for a while, will grow back lush and green in a few years' time.

Our willful ignorance and our incontrovertible hopefulness, things we cling to so tightly and want to call virtues, do not allow us to see the real damage being done.

I speak of course, of our forests, our mountains and wildlife.  But I speak also of the many human spirits who suffer at the hands of injustice, prejudice, hate and ignorance.  I speak of our willful blindness to the plights of our fellow man, the ones whose entire lives consist of struggle, a kind of hardship most of us will never know.  And why should we concern ourselves with them?  Sure, we know they are there, we see the signs of their presence, but we like to believe they are miles away from us.

How many times have you driven past the run-down trailer park, and instead of wondering why the landlord runs a slum, you've judged the people who live there as being lazy, drug users, illegal immigrants, loose women, the dregs of humanity?  How  many times have you shaken your head when you saw a dirty child in too-little clothes, too shy to speak to a stranger and assumed his mother must be bad?  How often do you inventory the groceries of the mom ahead of you in line at Ingles using her EBT card to buy food for her family and silently judge her for what she purchases?

You see the smoke, but you cannot acknowledge the fire.  It's too far from you--someone else will handle it.

But what we forget when we refuse to help fight the fire is that when one of us is struggling, when one of us is fighting a fire that is overwhelming, we all eventually lose.  Why must a struggling young family who can only afford to live in a small trailer have to also live with the stigma of the people in their community assuming the worst of them because a landlord chooses not to keep up her property?  Why can't we fight that fire by demanding better for the families who want to grow and thrive and build big beautiful lives for themselves in our midst?  Why do we choose, rather than to reach out and help, to be flame throwers?

This is our hazy November, and in the coming years, the haze will grow thicker all around us, even long after the forests have ceased their burning.

What will you do in your hometown, in your own little corner of the world to find the flames of destruction and put them out before our whole country becomes engulfed?  You and I, we cannot afford to turn our heads or stay inside to avoid seeing the smoke.  We cannot count on someone else to stamp out the embers smoldering in the underbrush.

You and I, we are the firefighters, and this fight is going to be a long one.

Are you ready to suit up and take it on?